Down by the River by Edna O'Brien

Author:Edna O'Brien
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

CASSANDRA

Noni’s finest hour has come. She already pictures herself on some sort of illuminated dais, the people coming to give thanks to her for what she has done. She pictures how she will relay it, in what detail will she not describe the random action of her moving from the range in Betty’s kitchen across to the window where the phone lay, debating as to whether or not it was improper to use Betty’s hairbrush and then chancing on it, the fluke of fate which made her look down into the wastepaper basket and see. She will give pause before she enlarges on the shock which she endured at the thing which stared back up at her; a geisha, all tresses and come-hithers, the black print, the vile black print which read, ‘Unwanted pregnancy – confidential advice.’ She will describe how she bent down to pick it up but at first was too frightened to go on reading it, knowing that she was on the brink of a most terrible discovery and then the clues falling in together as if by a piece of wizardry, the fact of Mrs Crowe saying they were off to Dublin, yet getting English money in the bank, buying Mary a nightie and a toilet bag, hiring a taxi from the city twenty miles away, in case a local driver informed. She will tell them too how in that instant she re-saw the pictures of the conked and bleeding infant Roisin had showed her and how she felt Our Lady’s sad tears dropping down on their little village.

When Lizzie re-enters with the mountainous load of logs, Noni is in the rocking chair, bleating her anguish, her neck and cheeks giving way to rampant patches of colour, gasping before she speaks, before saying, ‘Like a good woman will you pass me my handbag and get me a drink of water … I need to take my tablets.’

‘What’s come over you, missus, is it the change?’

‘No, Lizzie, I’ve had that … A long time ago.’

‘I never had it … Because I never had a monthly … I escaped it all,’ Lizzie says, laughing.

‘Lizzie, could you go upstairs for a few minutes because I have to make the most important call of my life.’

‘Is it your husband?’

‘You’ll know soon enough, Lizzie, and when you do you’ll need tablets.’

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